The present invention relates to a trolley for loading rolls of band-like material in a device for feeding a packaging machine.
In particular, the present invention relates to a trolley used to load a row of rolls of wrapping material into the device for feeding the reserve magazine of a machine which uses said band-like material to wrap or package.
It is known, in the field of automatic machines of the above described type, to use magazines which can support a plurality of rolls of band-like material and automatically feed them to a subsequent processing station.
The rolls are usually arranged in series, side by side and mutually coaxial, so as to form a continuous row; adapted transfer means remove a roll from the magazine when the used roll ends. This allows to make the packaging machine self-sufficient for relatively long periods.
A device for feeding the magazine of said packaging machines is described in Italian patent application No. 3461 A/90 and provides fixed means for the static support of a row of rolls and means for lifting and moving forward said row of rolls; said means can be actuated along a closed path defined by four successive positions, respectively an idle position, a roll lifting position, a roll transfer position and a roll release position.
The problem thus arises of periodically loading a row of rolls onto said device for feeding the magazine of packaging machines.
Conventional trolleys, on which the rolls to be loaded are arranged side by side in a row, are currently used for this purpose. However, since said trolleys entail manual interventions, they do not allow to easily transfer the row of rolls onto said feeder device.